How to Set Up a Payment Gateway for Your Online Store

An online store gives customers the freedom to shop right from the comfort of their homes, making the process easier, quicker, and less stressful. But, of course, if you don’t meet your customer face to face, you can’t hold out your hand and accept cash as a form of payment. So, how do you take payment if you have an ecommerce shop? You do so with a payment gateway.

Payment gateways allow customers to pay digitally, using a variety of devices. They link to your customers’ bank accounts so that they can pay on the spot and you can begin the shipping process right away.

If you have your store set up and are trying to nail down that final factor that will allow you to start selling goods – the payment process – then this post is for you. We are going to look at how you choose and integrate a payment gateway South Africa.

Deciding on Payment Gateway Providers

There are a fair amount of payment gateway providers out there, but they don’t all offer identical services. For this reason, you need to think carefully about what you need as an online store, and what sort of payment options you want to give your customers.

Presuming you want your online store to make the shopping process as easy as possible for your customers, you should limit your search to gateways that allow payment from multiple devices. This way, your customers can shop from their phones and tablets while they are on the go, and from desktops and laptops when they are at home or the office.

You also want to concentrate on gateways that offer the best possible security for your customers. Encryption goes without saying, and multiple security layers are desirable.

Setting Up Your Payment Gateway

If you used third-party software to design your site, it should make allowances for the integration of your gateway. If not, you will have to hard-code your gateway into your site, which is very difficult if you are not a web developer. If this is the case, you are better off hiring a professional coder to build in your gateway.

Once your gateway has been installed you will need to run some tests from sandbox accounts. These will be test transactions just to see if the gateway is performing the way it should.

Payment Gateway South Africa

If you want a gateway that is easy to install and is extremely secure, look no further than i-Pay. We make the payment process extremely simple for your customers, and ensure a protection plan to bolster our security.

For more on our services, or to get started with i-Pay, contact us today!